System and method for determining by an external entity the human hierarchial structure of an rganization, using public social networks

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for determining the hierarchical structure of an organization, using data from a social network, for example, Facebook. The method is partially indirect, as it includes some determinations with respect to the departmental division of the organization as well as determination of leadership personnel that are not explicitly indicated anywhere in the social network. The method of the invention is mainly based on analyzing the connections between people, or more particularly the method is based on analysis of “friends” lists of persons within Facebook (or another social network).

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The field of the invention relates in general to extraction of information from public social networks. More particularly, the invention relates to a method and system for determining by a third party a human hierarchical structure of an organization, based on information which is publicly provided by a social network.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]In recent years, online social networks have grown in scale and variability and today offer individuals the possibility of publicly presenting themselves, exchanging ideas with friends or colleagues, and networking in a scale and manner which was impossible a few years ago. For example, Facebook has more than billion registered users, with many new users signing up each month. According to recent statistics published by Facebook, 50% of Facebook users log onto this site on a daily basis, with an average total time of more than 7 hours per month and more than 30 billion pieces of content shared each month (web...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is a method for determining the structure of a commercial organization based on data from public social networks. The method involves extracting information about employees from the social networks, such as their names and their connections with other employees. From this data, a network representation of the organization is created, which is then divided into different departmental structures and roles. The method also includes using centrality measures to determine key positions within the organization. Overall, the invention allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the commercial organization and its employees.

Problems solved by technology

Sometimes, sensitive business data is also unintentionally exposed.

In many cases, structural data of organizations is not publicly available.

In other cases, a few pieces of data are available for an organization, not enabling the construction of the complete structure.

The data which the art is able to extract from publicly available social networks is, however, insufficient to determine the structure of a commercial organization.

The extraction of a community structure by the prior art, however, fell short of determining of a departmental and human structure of organizations using data extracted from publicly available social network.

Moreover, the art fell short of determining the hierarchy and leadership structure of organizations, using said data.

However, in a vast majority of the cases, this will not lead to the structure of the company.

However, this structural construction can typically be performed only when the relevant data is directly available, and it may typically require a significant amount of manual lengthy work.

Various limitations are applied by social networks on searching their databases.

For example, upon typing in LinkedIn the word “IBM”, only a limited list of the IBM workers is provided (for example 300 workers), which does not enable construction of the complete structure of this corporation.

However, Facebook throttles massive crawling attempts by limiting the number of operations performed by a single account or from a single IP address.

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